AFTEREFFECTS: PEACEKEEPING

By CARLOTTA GALL

Published: April 26, 2003

KABUL, Afghanistan, April 25—
In the middle of the main road between Kabul and Kandahar lie two bombed-out, rusted fuel trucks, destroyed in American strikes in October 2001. That no one -- not the Americans, nor international aid workers, nor Afghans themselves -- has dragged them out of the way shows how little has been done to mend Afghanistan since the 2001 war, despite promises of copious foreign assistance.

In a very real sense, the war here has not ended -- as shown by an attack today that killed two American soldiers and by a planned visit on Sunday from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Nearly every day, there are killings, explosions, shootings and targeted attacks on foreign aid workers, Afghan officials, and American forces, as well as continuing feuding between warlords in the regions.

No clear picture exists of who will provide the security to stop the bloodshed: the government of President Hamid Karzai, which still has no national army or police force; or the international force of 5,000 peacekeepers here in the capital; or the 11,500 Americans, Romanians and other foreign soldiers still in the provinces hunting for the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

For months now, the American military here has talked of moving into ''Phase Four,'' which would mean winding down combat activities and entering a period of reconstruction. Yet the military is still mounting large-scale combat operations in the pursuit of armed groups of rebels in mountain hideouts, and turning villages upside down in a search for suspects and weapons that is making the foreign presence ever more unpopular with Afghans.

In southern and eastern Afghanistan, the exiled Taliban movement has been resurgent since December. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a renegade mujahedeen commander and former American ally, has called for a holy war against ''occupying forces.''

The attack today, which killed an American soldier near a Special Forces base close to Shkin in eastern Afghanistan, was particularly brazen. About 20 rebels opened fire on a platoon of American and Afghan soldiers in broad daylight, wounding at least six other soldiers before retreating across the border to Pakistan, as many attackers have in recent weeks. A second American soldier later died of wounds from the battle, Reuters reported.

Cross-border violence has risen so much that President Karzai, apparently with the backing of the United States, took the unusual step this week of naming the fugitive Taliban leaders he wants Pakistan to hand over to his government in Kabul.

His administration appears equally hamstrung, however, when it comes to reducing the power of the warlords, who often put personal interest before national unity, but who have been virtually the only source of security for ordinary Afghans, who have been looking for safety and some form of economic subsistence since Afghanistan began to fall into chaos more than two decades ago, during the Soviet invasion in 1979.

Fixing the Kabul-Kandahar road, one of the main arteries of the country, has been a priority of the Karzai government. It is part of the American-led $180 million plan to repair main roads and provide hundreds of jobs. Yet now, in the second year of reconstruction, there is no sign of any work being done all along this 300 miles of ruts and holes.

American soldiers at their headquarters at Bagram Air Base, near Kabul, share many of the apprehensions of the Afghan public -- despite their public, official optimism on their ability to secure both Afghanistan and Iraq. ''I don't feel comfortable watching us start on another war when this remains unfinished,'' one soldier at Bagram said recently, insisting on anonymity. ''It would have been better if we could have moved into Phase Four before they started in Iraq.''

After their grueling hikes through the Afghan mountains, American troops often head back to base with little to show for their effort. The international coalition here regularly announces that weapons caches have been seized and destroyed, but there have been few important arrests made, and no pause in attacks on American bases and Afghan government posts and personnel.

A recent two-week operation with 500 Special Forces and airborne infantry troops in the Baghran Valley in the southern province of Helmand failed to net its main prey -- Abdul Waheed, the local chief of Baghran, and another former Taliban commander, Mullah Kabir. Both men got away, and Mr. Waheed later told friends that he had made it to the safety of Quetta in Pakistan, an American official said.

The continuing airborne assaults and rough searches are angering Afghan villagers, especially when fatal errors are made. One of those, an airstrike that was meant for a group of rebels but that hit a house in eastern Afghanistan this month, killed 11 members of a family as they slept. The bombing occurred near Shkin, where today's attack happened and where the first signs of renewed rebel activity emerged last Dec. 21, when an American soldier on patrol was shot dead.

The recent operation in Helmand left one shepherd dead and five people injured, three of them children. A trail of houses was trashed and looted; other families wept to see their male breadwinners detained.

The popularity of the American presence was also not increased by the deaths of two men among a group of Afghans arrested and held for interrogation at Bagram Air Base in December.